


Challenge Accepted

by wangler



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Awkward Dates, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Humor, M/M, Recovery, Romance, Season/Series 03 Spoilers, Sleep Deprivation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-19
Updated: 2014-02-19
Packaged: 2018-01-13 01:14:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1207363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wangler/pseuds/wangler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek sits up, stretching and being effortlessly nice to look at. "We're having dinner?" he says, with just enough of a shitty tone to spoil the sexiness of his posture and general existence.</p><p>"In my Jeep?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Challenge Accepted

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place the summer after The Shit has been handled. References to current events in Season 3b.

The only good thing that happened in the fall was Stiles' dad having the presence of mind to withdraw him from all of his classes before his GPA took an irreversible nose dive. The only good thing happening this summer is basically nothing at all, unless Stiles counts the fact that he's 99.9% sure that he's no longer possessed by a chaotic, life-ruining evil spirit.  
  
Summer school sucks. It's not even the way it is in the movies. He doesn't take his classes at school, he takes them at Beacon Hills Community College, where he's the youngest person in every class and the teachers are all burned out grad students who seem like they'd rather be anywhere else even more than the students do.  
  
His American History class is the absolute worst. The teacher is perpetually high and spends the first 10 minutes of every class trying to flirt with the girls who sit in the front row and aren't having it. Stiles has a bet with himself over how long it'll take the guy to figure out that they're dating. Each other.  
  
Luckily Stiles doesn't have to worry about falling asleep in class. Stiles texts Lydia as much, since they're still on the _any plans this weekend?_ portion of the syllabus and he's getting bored.  
  
His phone buzzes immediately. **Too soon.**  
  
No such thing, though. If you can't laugh about the constant, crushing terror that you're going to doze off in public and wake up with blood on your hands and a trail of smoke and terror in your wake, what can you laugh about it?  
  
After a fascinating three hours really digging into the intricacies of the Three-Fifths Compromise, the teacher scribbles the homework assignment on the board. Stiles writes it down, breathing through the falling-feeling ping of anxiety that hits him every time he starts to read. It's fine, of course. Words haven't been weird since the fall. He can read. He's awake. And if he's hallucinating just a little once in a while, it's only the fact that he's sleeping maybe two or three hours a night these days.  
  
He had a brief, happy, very embarrassing cry the night he Googled his way to discovering that the symptoms of sleep deprivation are really similar to the symptoms of having a demonic fox hitchhiking in your brain.  
  
It's early evening when he walks out in the parking lot. The shadows are long and the light's really pretty and it's the perfect balance of dry heat and light wind that makes living in Northern California more or less worth the infestation of largely terrifying supernatural creatures. When it's nice out like this, he's almost enthusiastic. It's like he's got a pilot light on in his chest and eventually something's going to get it really burning and he'll feel like he's alive again. That has to happen, right? Maybe enough pretty evenings will do the trick.  
  
"Oh my God!" he shouts, flailing right into the horn of his Jeep. It gives a solid squawk until he rights himself and leans into the backseat and punches Derek Hale right in his stupidly solid shoulder for scaring the shit out of him. "What are you doing?"  
  
"Sleeping. Aren't classes supposed to be 45 minutes long?"  
  
"No. They're three hours. Why. What. What?"  
  
Derek sits up, stretching and being effortlessly nice to look at. "We're having dinner?" he says, with just enough of a shitty tone to spoil the sexiness of his posture and general existence.  
  
"In my Jeep?"  
  
"You didn't specify."  
  
Stiles squints. Now that Derek mentions it, he sort of vaguely recalls maybe asking Derek out the night before. But really, no one should be taking him particularly seriously. He even bcc'd everyone with a helpful PDF on sleep deprivation symptoms so they'd stop looking at him like he might barbecue a kitten at any second and also so that people like Derek Hale would not take him seriously if he got snuggly and punchy and decided a date with an older guy might be just the trick to make his summer suck less.  
  
"I'm pretty sure if I had specified, it would be, I don't know, at a restaurant," Stiles says. "Just throwing that out there."  
  
"You look tired," Derek says, mouth gone all dubious and concerned.  
  
Stiles throws his keys at him. "Then you can drive."  
  
He climbs into the passenger seat and sulks as hard as humanly possible until curiosity gets the better of him about four minutes later and he asks where they're going.  
  
"I have the crockpot going at the loft," Derek says.  
  
"You own a crockpot?"  
  
"Less cleanup," Derek says, very seriously.  
  
Stiles rubs his eyes. It's discussions like this that leave him wondering things, and wondering things -- like whether or not he's really awake -- is a real joy killer. He's just going to take Derek at face value. Who says being a werewolf makes you immune to the convenience of a one-pot meal?  
  
"If you cooked at home, why did you go to sleep in my Jeep?"  
  
Derek gives him a look. "Because your class was three hours long."  
  
"Did you... walk here?"  
  
Derek idles at a red light. "Scott dropped me off. He's borrowing my car to drive to the coast tonight, remember?"  
  
Stiles remembers, with an annoying little twist in whatever organs make you feel shitty when your friends are doing normal fun life summer teenager things and you're still not cleared by your dad to drive more than 15 miles out of town.  
  
He also hates sentences that end with _remember?_ because roughly half the time he doesn't. This was probably a terrible idea.  
  
"You're getting grumpy," Derek observes dispassionately.  
  
"You're really one to talk."  
  
"I am not grumpy."  
  
"I think you need to face the facts. You have a grumpy resting face. I think it's the eyebrows. They're sort of aggressive, as far as facial hair goes. Brow hair." Stiles touches his own eyebrows, wondering if there's another name for the hair that grows on the top half of your face. Probably not.  
  
Derek keeps driving.  
  
"Why did you fall asleep?" Stiles asks.  
  
Derek glances at him with just enough significance that Stiles' heart sinks. He's missing something.  
  
"So. What's in the crockpot?"  
  
"Just chicken."  
  
"Excellent. I love just chicken."  
  
Derek's jaw tightens. "It's roasted chicken with rosemary, lemon and sea salt. I found the recipe online."  
  
Stiles looks out the window. Usually when he's a passenger in his own Jeep, something dire is happening. It's kind of nice to enjoy the blur of trees passing by, as well as the slightly nauseating, complicated jumble of emotions that strike him when he thinks about Derek Hale taking the time to search for, shop for and prepare a recipe. For him.  
  
He's still missing something. It's an uneasy feeling, and his fingers itch with the compulsion to count them. The only thing that stops him is knowing how hard Derek will call him out on it.  Scott's taken this whole thing pretty badly, and that makes sense, but Derek's gotten weirdly invested in it too, and that doesn't make any sense.  
  
The idea of roasted chicken sounds really good, though. And if Derek has to pull the Jeep over to look pained and hurty while insisting that all parties are, in fact, awake, it's going to delay dinner.  
  
"I should have brought dessert. Is that a thing?"  
  
"It's not a dinner party," Derek says. "It's just chicken."  
  
"I've never actually cooked raw chicken. It looks like pale ballskin, you know?"  
  
"No Stiles. It looks like chicken."  
  
Stiles catches the keys when Derek tosses them over the Jeep to him in the parking lot below the loft. There's an easy synchronicity between them.  
  
"What?" Derek asks.  
  
"What... what?"  
  
"You're smiling."  
  
Stiles licks his lips, sort of confirming what Derek has pointed out. "Hey it's date night, man."  
  
Derek rolls his eyes and turns away to take the stairs obnoxiously quickly. (But not fast enough to hide his own smile, which sends Stiles' already confused guts into another miniature tizzy.)  
  
The loft smells good. Like, restaurant good. Better than it did the night before, when --  
  
"Oh," Stiles says, coming up short at the front door.  
  
 _Scott and Isaac go home early for their road trip, leaving half a pineapple and ham pizza on the big table next to Derek's little kitchen._  
  
 _"Challenge accepted," Stiles says._  
  
 _When there's about half a piece left he concedes defeat and kind of waddles over to the couch where Derek's watching a nature documentary on Netflix on his laptop._  
  
 _"Did you get enough pizza?" Derek asks._  
  
 _"I detect sarcasm."_  
  
 _"I detect pizza breath. Move over."_  
  
 _"No," Stiles says, slitting flush against Derek. "Get a real TV if you don't want to be squished. Actually, get a real TV, full stop. The majesty of Planet Earth deserves more than a 16 inch screen."_  
  
 _They make it through a long segment on deep sea creatures when a full-body yawn strikes Stiles and he shudders. Derek is looking at him._  
  
 _"Did I fall asleep?" Stiles asks._  
  
 _"Almost," Derek says, frowning. He un-pauses the documentary and turns the volume down a few blips._  
  
 _"Almost," Stiles echoes, full and warm and half-able to remember what it felt like to just get sleepy like a normal person who isn't scared of falling asleep._  
  
 _"Put your head down," Derek says._  
  
 _Stiles grits his teeth. "No."_  
  
 _"Don't put your head down," Derek says, reassuringly pissy._  
  
 _Stiles is about to say something really biting and witty, probably, when Derek's fingers work into the hair at the back of his head and make swirly sorts of patterns that are enormously unfair. It hits him, with a wave of mortification, that he might actually cry because it feels that good and he's still a little short on affection these days mostly because sometimes he can't stand to be around people, especially people who are nice to him._  
  
 _He puts his head down on Derek's thigh, hiding his vaguely teary face against the rough denim. Derek's really good at petting. He pets Stiles' back too, and it gives him warm tingly feelings all over, and the room spins around them lazily, like a carousel._  
  
 _"Stiles," Derek says, right as Stiles starts to get really concerned over how sleepy he is. In the form of feeling like the oxygen is leaving the room. "I'll stay up. I'm not tired."_  
  
 _"That's Twilight-y," Stiles mumbles._  
  
 _"Are you saying you're Stella?" Derek asks._  
  
 _"Bella. Derek. It's Bella," Stiles says with an exhaled laugh. "Did you really read it?"_  
  
 _"No. It was on TV once. Did you?"_  
  
 _"Research," Stiles says, yawning. "Werewolves. There's. Werewolves."_  
  
 _He closes his eyes for a second, and hums his contentment against Derek's thigh._  
  
 _"I'll stay awake," Derek says quietly, drawing circles on his back. His hands are warm. "You're okay. You're safe here."_  
  
Derek stops and looks at him. "What?" he asks, sound like someone who's worried they have toilet paper stuck to their shoe. "What is it?"  
  
Stiles rubs his nose, half-heartedly trying to hide his smile because it feels weird, stretchy and warm at his mouth. "I just remembered something," he says.  



End file.
